BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

South Los Angeles is the last place a person might expect to find a tranquil walkway winding through the canopy of a mixed evergreen and deciduous forest. But 10 or 12 years from now, when the pines and redbud trees of Vermont Miracle Park have grown up past the metal railings of its 11-foot-high elevated walkway, residents of Vermont Knolls will have the chance to disappear into nature—if only for a few minutes.

Occupying just 10,500 square feet, Vermont Miracle Park was designed by Hongjoo Kim Landscape Architects and developed by the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust (LANLT), a nonprofit organization formed in part by then-city council member Eric Garcetti, Honorary ASLA, in 2002 to bring additional green space to underserved neighborhoods like Vermont Knolls, a predominantly African American and Latino community not far from Compton. It’s an area characterized by strip malls, auto body shops, and more than its fair share of vacant lots.

The lot at 81st Street and Vermont Avenue had been vacant since the building there burned down in what Keshia Sexton, the director of organizing at LANLT, refers to as the 1992 Uprising, after the acquittal of Los Angeles police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. Twenty-five years later, the lot has been transformed into much-needed green space, funded through (more…)

BY STEPHEN ZACKS

At Zaryadye Park in central Moscow, a procession of Eurasian birch trees, grasses, and shrubs winds downhill from a glass-encrusted outdoor amphitheater that tops the new Philharmonic Hall, framing photogenic views of the candy-colored cupolas of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. The park’s verdant terrain folds onto the rooftops of five scalloped pavilions that shelter a botanical display, an educational center, a food court, and a screening room that plays an immersive 3-D film on Russian history. The park, which covers 32 acres, stretches to the edge of Red Square, and even adds 11 square feet to the square that was uncovered during excavation. The pavilions, with their vegetated roofs, and most of the park’s terrain sit atop a 430-car underground parking garage. To keep the whole landscape in place, a geocell soil-stabilization system rests on top, anchoring granite pavers on pedestrian pathways that stretch onto an arching, boomerang-shaped overlook that cantilevers and hovers over the Moskva River. Here visitors of all ages and groups compulsively photograph themselves against the backdrop of the Kremlin and the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building, one of the Stalinist high-rises that define Moscow’s skyline.

Zaryadye Park is an entertaining landscape intended as a spectacular place, a special attraction, and a free public space—a term that Russian architects agree had almost no precedent in the language before a series of convergences brought the park into being. (more…)